43: Indeed, you have adorned yourself with the ...
[166] Indeed, you have adorned yourself with the qualifications of faithfulness and are striving to fulfil the requirements of servitude to the Abhá Threshold. You have been inebriated with the wine of the love of God, have quaffed your fill at the banquet of loyalty to His Faith and have caused the seekers of truth, those that are sore athirst for the life-giving waters of His grace, to drink from the heavenly stream of true understanding. This was indeed most fitting and appropriate. For in this grievous calamity, this distressing bereavement, the best consolation and solace that the spiritual souls could offer is to dedicate themselves to the service of the Cause, to diffuse widely the sweet savours of holiness, to become wanderers in the path of that heavenly Best-Beloved, to let their whole beings burn and melt, and be enkindled with the fire of His love. Such indeed is the effective remedy, the most potent cure for this irreparable agony, for this aching of the heart and soul. There is no other remedy.
Praise be to God that the effusions of celestial aid from the Abhá Kingdom are unceasing and the outpourings of heavenly grace from the Concourse on High uninterrupted. You should not think that your memory may ever, even for a moment, be removed from the minds of these oppressed ones, or that your remembrance may fade from the hearts of these exiled servants. The Abhá Beauty bears me witness and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá is my testimony that no word can possibly express how indissoluble are the ties of spiritual communion and fellowship that bind us to the loved ones of God and to the handmaids of the Merciful.
44: The deep heart’s love and the longing of the ...
[167] The deep heart’s love and the longing of the soul of this wronged one for those spiritual beloved ones, and in particular for those who are kin to the peerless Holy Tree of sanctity and oneness, cannot be told in words, and my most ardent wish is that I might correspond with each one of you, but our alarm and grief over this momentous happening, this terrible affliction and ill-omened agony, this inexorable divine decree, the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—may our souls be offered up for all the wrongs He bore!—has left us wretched, desolate, to such a degree that there is no peace in the spirit, no will to endure in the heart.
This is an earthquake which shook the foundations of our lives, this is a wailing and an uproar within the Company on High. The lightning bolt of this departure has set the very world aflame, and the fires of this leave-taking have scorched the whole earth.
The grieving dwellers in the courts of holiness have rent their garments of long-suffering, and the household of the Most High have put on mourning dress. Truly the people of Bahá and those who are kin to the divine Lote-Tree are sharing with us the pangs of this bereavement, this direst of torments, and are partners in anguish of those who suffer here.